Southern California home prices at seven-year high for August

CHUCK KIRMAN/THE STAR
Danny Belitski, owner of T.R.E.E. Real Estate, found a buyer for this $4 million house that recently sold along the Rincon north of Ventura.

Ventura County Star

CHUCK KIRMAN/THE STAR
Danny Belitski, owner of T.R.E.E. Real Estate, found a buyer for this $4 million house that recently sold along the Rincon north of Ventura.

Ventura County Star

CHUCK KIRMAN/THE STAR
Danny Belitski, owner of T.R.E.E. (cq) Trusted Real Estate Enterprises, found a buyer for this $4 million house that recently sold along the Rincon.

Ventura County Star

CHUCK KIRMAN/THE STAR
Danny Belitski, owner of T.R.E.E. Real Estate, found a buyer for this $4 million house that recently sold along the Rincon north of Ventura.

Ventura County Star

CHUCK KIRMAN/THE STAR
A bathroom sink in one of the 4.5 baths in a $4 million house that recently sold along the Rincon.

Ventura County Star

CHUCK KIRMAN/THE STAR
Danny Belitski, owner of T.R.E.E. Real Estate, found a buyer for this $4 million house that recently sold along the Rincon north of Ventura.

Ventura County Star

The median home price in Ventura County held steady in August for a third straight month, while sales activity in the mid- to upper-price ranges far outpaced sales in more affordable markets.

The county’s median home price was $450,000 last month — the same as in July but up 23.3 percent from the $365,000 median in August 2012, research firm DataQuick reported Thursday. The median home price across Southern California held firm at $385,000 last month.

The number of homes selling for below $200,000 last month tumbled 32.8 percent from a year earlier in the Southland — in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego and Ventura counties — while the number of homes that sold for $500,000 or more jumped 48.7 percent.

Ventura County Realtors said they are noticing a jump in demand for more expensive properties.

Bob Majorino, who owns five Prudential Real Estate firms in the county, said sales of homes in the upper price range are going strong, particularly because those buyers often pay cash and haven’t been affected by the recent rise in interest rates.

A few weeks ago, real estate broker Danny Belitski, owner of T.R.E.E. Real Estate, sold a $4 million home in the Seacliff Beach Colony on Rincon Beach Park Drive north of Ventura. The four-bedroom, single-family house built in 2010 was one of the most expensive sales to close in the area in more than two years.

“Confidence has come back for both the sellers and the buyers,” he said.

Sellers who managed to weather the Great Recession realize they can now sell for a profit, while others are happy to just break even after facing possible losses of hundreds of thousands of dollars, Belitski said.

Buyers want in because they’re looking for deals and interest rates are still low.

“If you buy now, you’ll be able to make some money,” Belitski said. “I’ve been seeing this for probably nine months. It started last year.”

With so many people selling higher-end properties, there’s a pickup in demand for houses available to lease for a few months while sellers find new homes.

“There aren’t a lot of homes to choose from, and they don’t want to be rushed,” he said.

Belitski said those sellers want luxury properties to rent, and there aren’t a lot of them available. He’s been leasing them for $4,000 to $10,000 per month in Ventura.

Across the county, 930 homes sold last month, a 4.9 percent decrease from August 2012. The decrease bucked the trend across Southern California, where sales increased 2.8 percent over August 2012.

The median home price for all of Southern California has risen on a year-over-year basis for 17 consecutive months, with double-digit gains in the last 13 months.

But the median last month was still 23.8 percent below the peak $505,000 median in the spring and summer of 2007, before the recession.

Bill Watkins, an economics professor at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks and director of the Center for Economic Research and Forecasting, said the market may shift in the coming months as investors drop out.

“In terms of the trend, I’m concerned that the investment buyers who have been driving the price increase we’ve seen over the last year or so are probably getting out of the market,” he said.

Still, Ventura County should fare better than many markets because of its desirable location, Watkins said.

“If the market happens to be soft, it’s still a good place to retire or move to,” he said. “We’re still cheaper than Santa Barbara and it’s a great place to live if you have to work in L.A. and can afford to live here and do the commute.”